Artist Statement

ARTISTS STATEMENT

SHERYL VAUGHAN

Artistic ability entered into my life like a run away steam train.  After a second encounter with meningitis the right side of my brain took over and, during the recovery process, I went into artistic overdrive.  Neon colours drew me to roll back my living room rug and paint huge canvases on the floor under a UV light.  Everywhere I looked, I was admiring what could be imagined as a beautiful photograph which consequently led me to look for the beauty and unusual in all I see.  Jewel colours, iridescent, fluorescent and shiny things are the palettes of my imagination.  My entry into the world of glass making was preceded by a cocktail of adult education in the fields of ceramics, fashion design and photography, which has been my necessary life-force.  A visit to the glassblowers in Florence, Italy at the age of 8, fired my imagination and instilled within me a love of glass, first as a collector, and now as a privileged member of an elite craft.  The love of colour led me to focus on glass, which eventually led me to undertake a degree in BA(Hons) Three Dimensional Design Glass Specialism.

Everything around me, whether it is from nature, how things work, or simple things like food packaging has the potential to be developed upon.  Bringing colour into our everyday lives is important to me and I enjoy creating works that evoke memories from my life, humour and social issues.  Being able to express something in glass, whether it is a shell picked from the beach with my grandson, the feeling one gets from a box of biscuits shared at Christmas with my family, and also to be able to share these feelings and aesthetics with the viewers of my work.  Glass can be both stunning and beautiful with its rich and vibrant spectrum of glowing colours, which can in turn, offer up unique pieces, both in form and pattern, showing many depths and facets that play with the light and which draw the viewer to look even more closely.

Exploration into particular processes such as casting with the lost wax technique has enabled me to continue working with my hands and has brought with it a fascination of ‘what can be moulded?’ and greater still, ‘how to achieve it’, with intelligent debates on technical problem solving.  How varied this medium can be just so long as you encourage your imagination to run wild, play and explore.   Glass is its own master and is fraught with unexpected outcomes, but the joy received in creating pieces of work through to their polished finish makes the hard journey so worthwhile. 

In the studio at present, I am experimenting with inclusions in fused and cast glass.  With the use of repeated tests and trials with wax, I am also endeavouring to create the illusion of movement in water by creating splashes and waves.  I would like to focus on the lost wax casting technique experimenting with more inclusions for my final year.


Now in my final year, I am experimenting with enamels and their movement within cast glass.  During the Summer 2014 I found myself in a huge thunderstorm with lightening bolts coming, not once but twice, within feet and inches from me.  I decided to research this fascinating element of our weather and possibly incorporate enamels within lightening shaped forms. This project is still ongoing….